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“We turned a national election into a school-board race”

Even inside Romney’s campaign, some advisers worried Ryan would be identified too closely with his proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program, an idea that could alienate seniors critical in Florida.

Those concerns translated into disagreements between Ryan and the leadership in Boston. One week after his selection, Ryan, on his own, gave a speech about Medicare to residents of the Villages, a city-size retirement community in central Florida.

“We want this debate. We need this debate. We will win this debate,” he declared.

To the relief of Romney’s advisers, the debate never materialized. But they did not allow Ryan to set the agenda again.

As part of his role, Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and giving speeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment. But Romney advisers refused his request to do so, until mid-October, when he gave a speech on civil society in Cleveland.

As one adviser put it, “The issues that we really test well on and win on are not the war on poverty.”

Blowback

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Some of that expensive new data included viewer habits, collected by cable companies, that provided clues to voter traits and preferences. In a race where middle-class female voters were courted by both camps, the Obama campaign advertised heavily on the CBS’s sitcom “2 Broke Girls,” according to a Yahoo analysis of Federal Elections Commission data. The campaign bought detailed voter updates, issued every two weeks.

“The most striking data we saw early on was on the ‘understands problems of people like me’ question,” said a senior White House official involved in the discussions. “Into the summer, Romney was in the teens in this category.”

And this was apparently a big determining factor in the election. Voters felt that Obama cared more about them than Mitt did. Never mind what his actual policies are doing to the middle and lower class.

During the next months, Obama injected a new populism into his message, culminating with a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., where Theodore Roosevelt had called for a “new nationalism” a century earlier.

“This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class,” Obama said. “At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home and secure their retirement.”

It was the essential message, delivered variously as an attack against Romney and as a pledge to voters, of his campaign to come.

Sorry, but this is how Obama won.

he scared the middle class into voting for him.

And I hate to say it, but picking Ryan as VP was part of that.

And please, fellow conservatives, drop the sophmoric “objectivism”. It doesn’t sell. Never has.

And this was apparently a big determining factor in the election. Voters felt that Obama cared more about them than Mitt did. Never mind what his actual policies are doing to the middle and lower class.

Doughboy on November 7, 2012 at 1:08 PM

Yep. They “felt” better about Obama and believed he cared even as he screwed/screws them six ways from Sunday.

To be fair, what the poll found was that the majority of black people believed that hard work resulted in success; however, 95% of them believed that the Federal government should take the lead on job creation.

I see common ground – like conservatives, they believe that hard work is how you get ahead.

The main difference is they believe the feds help create jobs – if we are correct that the federal government is not good at job creation and that it is best handled by small businesses operating in the free market, we can make that case. It might take a while, but, we can make that case.

I’m not saying that they’ll wake up the next morning and vote for Republicans, but, they will start demanding that the Democrats they vote for support business-friendly policies and that’s still a victory.

As part of his role, Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and giving speeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment.

I linked to this article many times this year:

When Mr. Romney was running for president four years ago, he said in an interview that the first thing he would do in the White House would be to bring in some business consultants. In other words, Washington is a management problem.

This is a profoundly mistaken Republican notion that goes back at least to Herbert Hoover . . . Republicans like Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and John McCain may have been more accomplished in the political realm but all struggled with what Bush 41 famously called the “vision thing.” Time and again, they’ve been defeated by Democrats proclaiming such things as the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and “hope and change.”

Political language is inherently moral, not managerial. It must convey visions, not just plans. It must explain why some things are good and others bad.

Instincts are never enough. You need to have thought about politics in the philosophical sense to know what is going on. . . .

If you cannot articulate the cause for which you are fighting in moral terms, you will lose.

I think this is why we see this contradictory craziness of a majority of people saying government does too much, but then they re-elect Obama.

There were enough people who bought his lies and don’t get that the vision he lays out is contradictory to reality and to their own well-being. There will always be those who must be led by the hand and told how the dots connect. You must explain why some things are good and others bad. When you don’t, then you’re laid vulnerable to fighting on the stage of personal attacks.

The arena is in the realm of ideas. In that ring conservatives will win every time.

Some of that expensive new data included viewer habits, collected by cable companies, that provided clues to voter traits and preferences. In a race where middle-class female voters were courted by both camps, the Obama campaign advertised heavily on the CBS’s sitcom “2 Broke Girls,” according to a Yahoo analysis of Federal Elections Commission data. The campaign bought detailed voter updates, issued every two weeks.

Oh dear god.

If that’s how they beat us, we should just hang ‘em up now.

KingGold on November 7, 2012 at 1:03 PM

I have no objection to Obama advertising on “Two Broke Girls.” I’m just concerned that thanks to him we’ll have “One Broke Country.”

You can nominate someone else, but the same GOP hacks are running the campaign show, running away from the Reagan electoral model and toward the H.W/Dole/McCain/Romney model.

The benefits of conservatism to the working class are not intuitive. It goes against everything we’re taught about 20th Century history in our public schools. It has to be explained and advocated. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re setting your ceiling at 50%+1.

Ryan was trying to win through solid strategy. The Romney campaign disagreed and told him to stop.

Ryan is a good soldier. He performed solidly.

I did not agree with Romney picking him. It didn’t help Romney.

portlandon on November 7, 2012 at 1:38 PM

Romney picked Ryan to help shore up the conservative base and to help him govern. Obama lost 10 million votes – 16% of his support. He won because 3 million fewer Republicans supported R/R than supported McCain /Palin.

Romney was a terrific candidate. That he and Ryan received less support than McCain/Palin paints a depressing picture of the Republican Party.

The arena is in the realm of ideas. In that ring conservatives will win every time.

INC on November 7, 2012 at 1:33 PM

Not if it includes marketing. We make an argument for why the government is not responsible for buying people’s birth control and we are successfully painted as anti-woman. We make an argument for the private sector being better at job creation and we are successfully painted as anti-poor.

We don’t need better facts but we desperately need better packaging.

So does Paul Ryan, right — he sure wanted that stimulus money.

urban elitist on November 7, 2012 at 1:34 PM

Is your point that he voted for it after sitting in a room with top economic advisers in the country telling congress that the country would be destroyed if they voted against it?

I personally think those advisers wanted the government to bail out their friends but I don’t blame congress for listening to the experts.

If you had a different point you’ll need to restate it as it wasn’t too clear.

The benefits of conservatism to the working class are not intuitive. It goes against everything we’re taught about 20th Century history in our public schools. It has to be explained and advocated. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re setting your ceiling at 50%+1.

Not if it includes marketing. We make an argument for why the government is not responsible for buying people’s birth control and we are successfully painted as anti-woman. We make an argument for the private sector being better at job creation and we are successfully painted as anti-poor.

Not “letting Ryan set the agenda” completely negated their chief reason for bringing him on board.

The man was the head of the Budget Committee, and the source of his appeal was his willingness to go toe to toe with Obama on fiscal issues – PPACA, entitlement spending, deficits, and so on.

To try and add that appeal to your campaign, while simultaneously muzzling him on his signature issue, makes me wonder why you likely short-circuited his political future beyond the House by bringing him on at this stage.

All this explanation of Ryan’s fault…Romney’s fault…bad “chess moves””..etc are crap.
You know why we lost?…people no longer care about the honor of their country. 230+ years of blood and treasure thrown away for the opportunity to become a teenager again.

This sounds like the best defense against “Palin lost us the 2008 election” that I’ve ever heard.

Rove got GWB reelected by running an incredibly divisive campaign which came back to bite him in the butt 2 years later. Axlerod is doing the same thing. Have patience, my friends. The SCOAMF will out.

To do that, we need people who are capable of making the philosophical case. Too many politicians are promoted because of their voting records alone and not because of their oratorical skills or charisma or other persuasive qualities.

I’m not saying sacrifice conservatism for personality, although it is very important to remember that no candidate is perfect and one who seems so will be easily characterized as “extreme”. Instead, give the charismatic newcomer a shot at that senate seat instead of going with the guy who has been your U.S. House rep for the past decade.

And be open to considering every candidate who wants to be known as grassroots fiscal conservative before making the choice; we are way, waaaaaaay too fractured at the primary level.